DAIRY MEETING. 141 



THE DAIRY COW AS A FARM RENOVATOR. 

 By R. W. Ellis, Embden. 



I started in life on a very small farm, which would carry only 

 four cows and a horse. It has never been my aspiration to 

 make money for money's sake, but my highest desire has been 

 to attain a position among the good farmers of the State, and I 

 have changed my location three times in order to get where I 

 could do more and better work. 



Thanks to the dairy cow, which has always been the prime 

 factor in my success, I have been able to double the capacity of 

 each farm on which I have lived, and have trebled the capacity 

 of the one we now own and where we have been living for four- 

 teen years. So if I have a right to speak on any phase of the 

 dairy question, and if what I may say is entitled to any weight, 

 it is in regard to the building up of the farm with the dairy cow. 



One of the most hopeful signs in the agricultural outlook of 

 Maine at the present time is the earnest desire on the part of so 

 many of the farmers, and especially the younger ones, to do 

 better and more thorough work, to build up the character of the 

 soil and to bring it back to its original fertility. 



Altogether too many of our Maine farms have been sadly 

 neglected in the past, occupied by a sleepy, slide-easy class who 

 enjoyed bewailing their own condition much better than trying 

 to improve it. Their fields are running out and weeds and 

 bushes are taking possession. They will boast of what their 

 farm has done in the past, and give as a reason for not keeping 

 it up that help is so scarce and high that they cannot afford to 

 hire, and their own boys have all left them. Who wonders that 

 the boys have run away from such farming? It was the wisest 

 thing they could do. Bright boys are not caught with chaff. 



Some one has said, "Seeing is believing, but feeling is the 

 naked truth." It is what a child feels and realizes that makes 

 a lasting impression. Let a boy get up behind a good trappy- 

 pair of horses and ride to spread manure, to plow it in, to pul- 



